


Songs of the House (wrap it like a blanket and go to sleep)

by alexiel_neesan



Series: The Cheese 'Verse (ABANDONNED) [3]
Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Abandoned Work - Unfinished and Discontinued, Books, Canon-Typical Violence, Derek has a dog, Multi, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, POV Derek, Pack, Sharing a Bed, Slow Burn, building a house, odessa the german shepherd, relationships, romantic relationship are not the focus
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-11-05
Updated: 2013-11-05
Packaged: 2017-12-31 05:11:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,206
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1027619
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alexiel_neesan/pseuds/alexiel_neesan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Derek (re)builds a house. He (re)builds relations. He (re)learns to live his life. There's a pack, a dog, a barn cat, five chicken and ten goats to help.</p><p> </p><p>Assorted and non-chronological ficlets and prompts from the Cheese 'Verse, Derek-centric (and The House-centric).</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. About the books—

The House takes months to finish. After the walls and roof and windows and insulation and floors and wiring and water are done, Derek deems the rest cosmetic. It can wait, or it can be painted and wallpapered one room at the time, and anyway the nagging feeling to be “done done done” goes mostly away once most of the pack is spread out to colleges and classes and jobs. He makes sure Isaac’s room is finished, with a real bed, for when he’s not sleeping over at Scott’s. Furniture, well furniture has never really been a priority for him— he has a bag of clothes and a mattress he shares with Odessa and a stove and a fridge and a shower, he calls it good and quit.

His priority is to set up his workspace and the cheese room, to set up the garden, to finish the garage-slash-barn and the goats’ enclosure. And when he decides he’s done for the day, after he’s done running with Odessa around the perimeter of the territory, he often has no interest in working on the house.

As the months go on, he gets pots of paints from Melissa, left-over from when she refurbished her house (‘White Willow’ and ‘Counting Stars’ and ‘Organdy,’ and its sounds like colors his own mother would have picked. Maybe she and Melissa would have been friends. ), a pile of garden tiles from Boyd’s grandmother (“Please, call me Venetia, none of that ‘Mrs. Boyd’ nonsense.”), a pile of mismatched curtains from the Sheriff (and the Sheriff doesn’t say anything once the “don’t ask where it comes from. I want you to have them” passes his lips in lieu of a greeting. Derek doesn’t ask. The fabrics smell slightly of perfume and dust. Derek doesn’t ask.), and odds and ends, the kind that gather dust in a corner when a house is finished, never thrown away because it could be used someday.

Erica brings him the worst books she can find at the bookstore she works at, cheap paperbacks with garish covers and half-naked people. They are even worse than the books Derek bought from supermarkets shelves.

Lydia gives him books she has finished reading, leaves them on the floor (then on the table, the couch, chairs) like an after-thought, but he notices she reads more American and European fiction those days, and less non-fiction, large physics and mathematics treatises in lieu of grimoires to her witch act.

Isaac, Scott and Stiles act as one and bring him all the books they had to read for English and AP English— he has ‘The Crucible’ and ‘Heart of Darkness’ in triplicate, Ralph Waldo Emerson and Hemingway, Jane Austen’s ‘Pride and Prejudice’ and the zombie version of the same, as if two copies of the original could hide that one. He thinks it’s entertaining, but wonders how there was still people living and breathing in England if that was how they took care of the zombie problem.

He says so, and the next book someone leaves (he suspects Boyd. The cover smell like Erica's bookshop and cheeseburgers, but not Boyd himself.) is ‘World War Z.’

He quells the zombie enthusiasm of the pack after that.

Peter sends him a ‘So You Were Bitten: A Guide To Your Life As A Werewolf’ from London, after months of radio silence. Stiles suggests burning it, as a precaution.

Cora sends books from wherever she is that month, mostly when she doesn’t call. He has books in Japanese, Spanish, Russian, and half a dozen more he doesn’t recognize and can't read. There’s always a scribbled note, _all is well, talk to you soon, I missed the ocean here._

The books pile up, in precarious rows under the windows. He thinks about building a shelf, maybe finding one on a curb, thinks again. Furniture is not a priority.

He likes the look of them, extra piles of insulation, words and words he could use but read instead, and they all come from other places, other people, but they are here. Here in the house, with him.


	2. Dinner

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Food, and dinner outside, and a pack.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Originally published at the now defunct the Cheese Verse tumblr.

Lydia takes charge of the decoration as soon as Isaac and Derek even mention a gathering in a couple throwaway comments. From that moment on, there’s no point trying to not make the gathering-slash-party-slash-“Let’s be adults”-dinner happen. Derek very much like the idea, once he’s taken the time to examine it.

The only tricky part is warning sufficiently in advance so that everyone can be there— moving shifts around, trading favors, or, in Erica’s case, making overt threats about being disturbed that day. Making the list of invites, which was the part Derek thought would be the most tricky, in the end is the easiest. Everyone sends him a couple names on top of their: there are overlaps, Melissa, Venetia and the Sheriff are invited by everyone and Derek wonders if he has been too subtle in considering them, if not pack, family and making it obvious that the House is always open to them. Isaac ponders inviting a couple of his college friends, Derek ponders if he should invite Marika (they’ve broken up at that point and strangely more comfortable with each other than ever). Scott brings up Deaton and Allison asks him if her dad’d be welcome. Erica and Boyd fight and make up twice in the week that leads to the dinner, Lydia and Stiles almost blow up the House’s kitchen.

Derek? Derek sets up a dinner plan— salads, main course, his own artisan goat cheese, desserts, associated drinks, pre-meal drinks. It involves a couple of tries in the non-exploded kitchen that are enthusiastically approved by the rest of the pack. It involves going around and finding the freshest ingredients when they are not growing in his garden. It involves a full day of preparation, Odessa his sole company, the german shepherd lying on the floor between kitchen area and living room area and barking in time with the music.

The evening of the gathering, the backyard looks like a photoshoot— Lydia’s reply to the praises is a “I was expecting nothing less” but there’s a smile on her face all night. Everyone comes, even Chris, everyone drinks and eats and shares the time around the dining table they set up in the strip of lawn between the back porch and the vegetable garden. The goats get much attention, and much petting— Odessa avoids being petted by the few people who don’t know her only by shadowing Derek.

The backyard is loud, and joyous. Derek kicks back his chair, beer in one hand and belly filled with laughter. The stars are visible above the tree line— the moon won’t rise for another few hours. There’s a strange feeling in his chest, something light and heavy at the same time. The Sheriff catches his eye and nods and smiles. It’s a good feeling. 

Derek hopes the others are good, content, happy, here and now. He is. And he wouldn’t change that for the world.


	3. Derek and Stiles (1)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Derek's dating history is revealed— sort of.

It goes softly, that thing he has for Stiles. He’s not going to say he was in love with the teenager Stiles was when they first met, when Derek was little more than a teenager himself. Stiles wasn’t even a friend to him at first— he was a variable he had to account for, loyalty and research and help and, too many times, the only reason Derek stayed alive.  
  
(There was a whiteboard in Stiles’ room during senior year, with a tally, all the marks under Derek’s name in stark black and none under Stiles’.)  
  
Stiles goes to college. Most of the pack does, close and less close and Derek encourages it, help buys textbooks and sends food and skypes regularly. Not everybody who leaves comes back for the brief break of Thanksgiving— Lydia and Stiles don’t, all the way on the other side of the country. When they make it back to Beacon Hills, it’s for the long month between their first and second semester.  
  
Stiles’s… different. In a good way. It’s in the way he holds himself, in the easy way he smiles like he knows things other people don’t (and he does, know so many things people don’t, people shouldn’t), in the way his hair is longer, his clothes more adjusted, confidence and curiosity in his eyes, on his face. He smells of other people, of books and dorms and other places and what would be knowledge if knowledge had a scent. He’s growing up. There are promises in his smiles. Derek catches himself thinking of wanting to believe in those.  
  
It’s even more striking during summer break. Stiles talked of taking summer classes, of not wanting to spend forever on his criminology degree when there was so many other things to know and learn. He still comes back, thinner and leaner and he runs with Isaac and Scott every other morning, Odessa on their heels, and he helps with the plants too. Derek looks. It’s hard not to. It’s hard to see the teenager Stiles was in the young man he’s becoming, broad shoulders freckling under the sun and sweat as he weeds out empty patches of ground that will receive mandrakes, carrots, bay laurel. Broad shoulders and strong hands speckled with dirt and mud, and knowing eyes when he gives Derek his glances back, mouth curling up at the sides.  
  
The first time they sleep in the same bed, Isaac and Erica are there too, curled around each other in quiet breaths and hogging blankets, and Derek’s usual wake up time drags curses and moans from all three of them. Derek takes great pleasure in taking the blankets away from them and getting dressed singing Queen’s “I’m Going Slightly Mad” at the top of his lungs. By the end of the song, he has them up and drinking tea and coffee down in the “kitchen-living-everything room how are we even supposed to call this? Open space yay?” Despite the grumblings, they do help him with the goats and the garden, catching themselves singing “I’m a banana tree-” at odd intervals. It’s a good day.  
  
Then it’s fall and school again. If Derek skypes him a little more often, Stiles doesn’t mention it. It’s just in the curl of his mouth and the mountain of information he shares.  
  
(Derek isn’t waiting for anyone to save him. He’s not a romance hero/heroine, despite Erica’s jokes to the contrary and her habit of leaving him the worst books she can find at the bookstore she works part-time at. He still read them, usually in the slow hours on Farmer’s Markets. It's a good conversation starter.

He had a boyfriend in college, and they sort of keep in touch since Derek is still on his school’s alumni e-mail list. Couple one-night stands when he went to see Laura in New York. Then a long nothing, because of a lot of reasons he doesn’t like to think about about. Then Marika, and it’s a trial-run for both of them. Breaking up is a relief, and they genuinely enjoy each other company without the tension that comes from dating. She ends up being more interested in his garden and what he can grow there, gives him the in with the North American Witchcraft Society, and most of his online traffic. They still meet up from time to time, mostly to bitch about the markets’ organizations and the poor grammar of e-mails businesses such as theirs inevitably receive.  
  
It’s different, with Stiles.)  
  
Winter break again, and it continues like the summer break— there is no dirt and sweat, and only light frost in the garden, but the glances are there. Then Spring again.

Then Summer.

Who says things first, it’s unclear. Maybe it started the moment Derek skyped to know if Stiles needed to be picked up from the airport. Maybe it started the moment Stiles came to the house, the morning after he arrived in Beacon Hills. Maybe it started when he left for the fall semester, last year.  
  
"Hey, Derek?" he says.  
  
_You had me at Hey,_ Derek thinks, and curses romance novels in his head.  
  
"I—" Stiles says, long fingers moving, twisting, and Derek thinks that he can’t mess that up. He can’t— whatever he has with Stiles, he can’t take the risk of messing with it, destroying it, thoughts patterns he has worked hard to get rid of, because that way come nightmares and bad years.  
  
"I think there’s something," says Stiles, hands gesturing between the two of them. "There. Between the two of us. And I wanted to know if— if you think so too, and if maybe you wanna see where it can go?"  
  
"I do—" says Derek, looking up at Stiles, but he keeps his arms crossed. It’s always been about protection, making himself look bigger and unmovable, and Stiles knows it. If he’s aware Derek feels very small at the moment, he doesn’t mention it. "But—" But he doesn’t want to mess what they have. But he doesn’t want to hurt Stiles— or Stiles to hurt him.  
  
"I know," says Stiles, and he sits down next to Derek, close enough to touch if either of them wanted to. "We’ll be okay."

**Author's Note:**

> The Cheese Verse lives on [tumblr](http://cheeseverse.tumblr.com)— come say hi!


End file.
